Influence of surface roughness effects on the performance of non-recessed hybrid journal bearings

The effect of journal and bearing surface roughness on the performance of a capillary compensated hole-entry hybrid journal bearing system has been theoretically studied. The analysis considers the average Reynold’s equation for the solution of lubricant flow field in the clearance space of a rough surface journal bearing system. The finite element method and Galarkin’s technique has been used to derive the system equation for the lubricant flow field. The non-dimensional parameters Λ (surface roughness parameter) and γ (surface pattern parameter) have been defined to represent the magnitude of height distribution of surface irregularities and their orientation, respectively. The influence of surface roughness on the bearing performance has been studied for the transverse, isotropic and longitudinal surface patterns. The bearing performance characteristics have been computed for both symmetric and asymmetric capillary compensated hole-entry journal bearing configurations for the various values of surface roughness parameter (Λ), surface pattern parameter (γ) and restrictor design parameter (C̄S2). The computed results indicate that the inclusion of surface roughness effects in the analysis affects the performance of a bearing quite significantly vis-à-vis smooth surface bearing. The study indicates that for generation of accurate bearing characteristic data, the inclusion of surface roughness effects in the analysis is essential.